


Adrift

by justanotherStonyfan



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Frottage, M/M, Nipple Play, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Nursing Kink, Temperature Play, Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-05 19:03:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier has been helping Widow, Hawkeye and Captain America on some missions but, when things go awry on a rescue run, Bucky Barnes has to help Steve Rogers any way he can - and quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adrift

**Author's Note:**

> Not really nursing kink and temperature play, but kind of?

_'Convoy Oh-One-Niner-Five-Niner, we have a storm rolling up on you on the radar.'_

“How long?” Natasha asked, checking the radar herself. “We have to have these people at the rendezvous in five hours or less.”

There was a pause while, presumably, the agent on the other end of the line worked through his information.

_'It looks like four hours, tops.'_

Clint screwed up his face, but Natasha answered anyway,

“Then we better keep moving. With our current speed, we'd get there in time but we'll have to slow down come nightfall.”

_'Roger that, Widow – keep us advised.'_

“Five-Niner out,” she said, and she looked at Clint. “Think we'll make it?”

Clint leaned a little to look at the wing mirror.

“I don't know,” he said, pointing at the rest of the convoy and the tiny figures reflected therein. “Ask our eye in the sky.”

~

 _“Keep an eye on the weather, James,”_ Natasha's voice came through, a lot less audible in the wind and swirling snow than he would have liked.

 _“We gonna have trouble?”_ Cap asked and, when James turned his head to look at him, it was Barton who answered.

_“Storm front heading in – looks like four hours at most.”_

_“What, worse than this?”_ Cap said, the sigh in his voice audible even over the whistling hiss. _“Not much we can do about it from here. Let me know about any developments and we'll just have to keep moving.”_

 _“Roger that,”_ Barton answered, and then they were silent again.

The problem with transporting refugees was that there were a lot of them, and that the trucks required to reach and recover said refugees were heavy-duty, with the emphasis very much on _heavy._

There were a great many people, an awful lot of heat blankets and luggage and food and drink, and they'd passed their last checkpoint about ten miles back when the ninth truck of eleven squeaked over to one side on the plain they'd come out onto. The truck didn't go anywhere – with the driver to thank for it staying in the convoy – but James could see it had unnerved the passengers to be jolted so suddenly.

They weren't moving fast, not by any means with the weather so bad, and, with Barton and Natasha up on the first trucks, he and Cap were able to keep an eye on the ones behind he was able to jump down and run to the next truck whenever he felt the need and, for the most part up until about an hour before nightfall, the journey was fairly uneventful.

Barton and Natasha had done the smart thing – bundled up like professionals. For him and Steve, they'd been assured that their suits had been adapted, but given that Cap was the leader and James was one of only two pairs of eyes watching over the convoy, Barton was in the cab of the first truck, keeping watch on their forward journey. They had to slow once the light began to fade, the trucks throwing long arcs of dappled light over the ground ahead of them in the snow, and it was slow enough that Cap could walk alongside the back two trucks to stretch his legs to bring up the rear. Bucky was still perched on top of the seventh truck's canopy, his goggles collecting snow that he had to wipe away every few minutes.

Far less visibility than he'd like.

In fact, it wasn't until the grey sky was tinged with blue, huge flakes coming thick and black in shadow, and James' visibility was down to seeing Cap as a dark shape whenever he leaned out of the back of his truck, or jumped down and ran along to the next one, that everything changed.

There was the whining of one engine, and then Cap's voice in his ear.

 _“Stop the convoy,”_ he said, _“Eleven's stuck.”_

James heard Natasha say something to Barton in his earpiece too, and hopped down off Seven.

~

_'Convoy Oh-One-Niner-Five-Niner, conditions changed – I repeat, conditions changed!'_

Natasha frowned down at the console, wary of the panic in the voice of their dispatch.

“Changed?” she said, voice like steel. “Changed how?”

~

“What do you mean stuck?” James said, although it was obvious that it was so – truck Eleven was about twenty feet behind them, and Steve's voice took a moment to answer.

_“Uh-”_

“Hey Barnes!” Barton's voice came through his earpiece and through the air to reach him.

“Get back to the front, it could be a trap,” he answered, glancing back over his shoulder to see Barton heading towards him in the growing dimness.

 _“No, listen-”_ he said through the earpiece, but truck Eleven made an unpleasant whining noise, and James turned to look at it to find it spinning its wheels.

“Cap!” he said, just as Barton yelled, _“Steve!”_ and James _really_ did not like the tone of Barton's voice, it made the hair rise on the back of his neck, made heat coil in his spine and his stomach.

 _“Dammit! James, you've got to get out of there, both of you!”_ Natasha said, and James could hear the sound of Cap's voice as he strained against the back of truck Eleven, including the gasp he gave when the truck kicked forward, off whatever had snared it.

The truck skidded forward, jumping a foot or six before the driver revved the engine and surged forward, skidding to a halt within inches of truck Ten.

 _“Oh God,”_ Cap murmured, having fallen to his hands and knees on the ground.

And then there was a noise like a single shot, followed by something that could have been thunder, loud and deep and echoing off the surrounding mountains. James, standing next to truck Ten, just stared at Steve.

Bucky knew that sound all too well, just as well as Steve.

“Go!” Barton yelled, arm up and circling as he ran back to the front of the convoy, voice loud enough that he could hear him yell through the wind and snow. “Everybody move!”

The trucks kicked forward, One through Eleven spinning wheels and revving engines until they were all moving too fast to catch up on foot, the noise of the people screaming and crying within barely audible over the engines. But the noise came again, more of them this time, _crack, crack-crack_ as Cap staggered to his feet, eyes wide, face pale, followed by a long, low, unearthly groan.

James ran for him as everything shifted under his feet, ankles wavering as the ground came up to meet him and then dropped away again.

Not a plain, not a stretch of open land, not a snow-covered escape route.

_Ice._

Cap couldn't move, one leg out at an odd angle as the ice shifted, the other coming up underneath him, and he looked up, looked straight at James, shaking his head.

 _“Bucky?”_ Cap said.

James nearly threw up when Cap disappeared through the ice with his gaze still fixed on him, but James ran instead.

 _“James!”_ from Natasha, and James barely heard her, _“Barnes!”_ and it didn't even register.

“Steve!” he yelled instead.

He knew about this, he'd heard about this, this was a thousand different things he'd been through and been told – hypothermia wouldn't set in for twenty to thirty minutes in temperatures like these, but cold water shock could have him drowning already, the vibranium wasn't strong enough to sink a man but the muscle seizing in cold water would only let it drag him down.

He dropped into a slide as he neared the fissure Steve had fallen through, skidding along cold ice and fresh snow and god _damn_ the person whose intel had Steve walking unprotected across sheet ice when -

James plunged his metal arm into the water and grabbed onto the first thing his fingers brushed against – fabric – to haul for all he was worth.

It didn't work the first time – something caught and James felt his fingers slip. He tried again and knocked what he felt clean out of the way, down.

_“Shit!”_

He kicked at the fragments of the edge of the ice that were closest to him and tried again, screaming through his teeth at the weight of Steve and his saturated combat gear and he gained purchase, but it wouldn't be enough – he needed Steve out of the water.

His fingers slipped _again,_ running the length of one of the uniform's straps as Steve sank lower, every bullet-proof, magic-resistant, heat-retaining layer soaked through with water below freezing – the sensors in his metal arm told him as much, and he plunged the second one in with a gasp of shock and pain.

“Jesus _Christ,_ ” he said, pulling hard, pulling harder, and Steve wouldn't rise, his body wouldn't come up and then- “Yes!”

It was like something broke – surface tension, the back of his mind registered dimly – and then the rush of water that came with Steve soaked the left leg of James' pants.

“Why the hell...do I gotta...haul you out all the... _goddamn time!?”_ he yelled, heaving Steve out little by little until he could drag him onto the ice next to him.

“Barnes!” Barton yelled, from somewhere, and he sounded far away – the next time was louder, through his earpiece. _“Barnes!”_

“He's moving,” James answered as Steve, on his belly on the ice with his stupid shield still in one stupid hand, started clawing at the ice under his fingers – cold water shock could have killed him in minutes, James knew that much, the automatic gasp-response and sudden drop in temperature a well-known terror.

Damn it, they'd even gone over this in briefing.

James shoved Steve over onto his side and Steve's whole body juddered inward even as his hand stretched out and flailed for purchase, like he'd been punched in the stomach, a shuddering noise of pain gurgling up from the back of his throat before he spat out a lungful of water – that gasp-response they'd been so kindly taught about.

“You fucking prick,” James muttered, pushing him over onto his back.

Steve's lips were purple, turning bluer by the second, and he was twitching, unpleasant contractions of his muscles – probably what kept the shield in his hand – as he moaned, teeth bared, but his hands were still moving, sweeping out and grasping.

“Fuck's sake,” James said, looking up to find out how to get back to the convoy.

Except the convoy was a good thirty feet away from them, on the other side of the inky black expanse of water that had opened up, as far as he could see.

“Are you shittin' me?” he managed to choke out, just as Barton's voice came through again.

_“Barnes, what are we-”_

“Are you _shittin'_ me!?” he yelled, and his voice seemed to echo forever.

Natasha appeared at Barton's side, staring back at him, both of them cast nearly into silhouette by the backlights of the goddamn trucks.

He looked down at Steve and shook his head. Steve's breaths were shallow, panting out in small white puffs of condensation, and he was still twitching. The snow falling on his face wasn't melting as quickly as James knew it should have – not at all.

“Bucky...” he slurred, and James tugged his glove off with his teeth, pressing his index and middle fingers to Steve's throat.

Steve's hands flailed again but his pulse wasn't as strong as James'd want. Still, it wasn't all over the damned place, and it certainly could be worse.

“Get back to the convoy,” he said, looking down at Steve.

_“James-”_

“Get _back_ to the goddamn _convoy,_ Widow,” he answered. “He got the truck out for a reason and we don't have time to go around, you better make damn sure you make rendezvous.”

She stood a moment longer, her long shadow cast by the lights stretching out across the water towards them.

And then she turned, and walked back to the convoy, hair whipping about her head in the wind until she disappeared into the light-and-snow void.

 _“Anything you need before we go?”_ Barton asked, as though it was as simple as a run to the store.

“You got a flask?” James answered. “I need to make sure he's got somethin' warm in him – we're two hours away from that last checkpoint, at least.”

 _“I'll see if there's anything I can send your way,”_ he said. _“Look, I'll radio back, we'll send out a party to you.”_

“I got a tracker,” James told him, “but we have to get back to the checkpoint before the weather turns, and they won't get a party out to us until tomorrow – we have to leave, all of us, _now._ ”

Barton ran off, back to truck Eleven – James' new favourite unlucky number – and James looked down at Steve.

“Suh-Sa- _huh_ -” he managed, shaking so violently his teeth were clattering, his whole body close to rigid.

“Shut up,” James told him, not unkindly, turning Steve's head towards him with his flesh hand because it was warmer. “Don't try to speak yet.”

 _“Heads up, Barnes,”_ Barton said, and James looked up as Barton fired an arrow about ten feet to their left.

James went to get it immediately, unscrewing the flask Barton had bound to it to sip at it – tomato soup of all things, and it wasn't as hot as he'd like, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

He ran back, back to Steve, and lifted his head to get the soup down his damned throat – get core temperature up, or was that hypothermia?

 _“Stay in touch,”_ Clint told him, _Good luck._

 _“Fuck you,”_ James answered. _We're going to need it._

~

Hauling Cap to his feet wasn't easy – not with Cap weighing almost half as much again, not with Cap's whole body still twitching from the cold.

“Buh-uh-”

“I told you to shut up,” James told him, getting one of Cap's arms over his shoulders – it didn't help much, Cap was still practically doubled over from the pain of the cold and one hand was still flailing. “We have to get back to the last checkpoint. Ten miles in two hours, or we get a storm on top of us.”

“Sorry,” Cap managed to get past his blue lips and chattering teeth. “Soh-Sorry...”

“Tell me in the morning,” James answered, casting one last glance back at the convoy as it retreated into the swirling snow. “Right now, you gotta get one foot in front of the other. You got it? Keep moving, keep breathing, and I'll kick your ass for this.”

Cap huffed a laugh – or maybe it was a groan – but he dragged one foot across the ice and set it down.

 _Keep moving,_ James told him silently, as Steve's hand found what it was looking for, clenched tight in the fabric of James' jacket, _and for the love of God, don't die._

~

The convoy drove into the storm less than two hours later, visibility down immediately to almost absolute zero.

“Shit,” Barton muttered. “Two hours – they gave us four.”

“We're moving forwards, headed into it,” Natasha answered, studiously not looking at him. “They'll be fine.”

***

After two and a half hours, James' lungs were burning, his extremities numb. It wouldn't be frostbite – that was hard enough for him to contract – but his right arm and left leg were stiff, Cap's weight pushing an ache into his spine that wouldn't be easy to walk through if it reached an intolerable point.

“I...” Cap managed, although his words had been slurring for the last forty minutes, and he was barely able to take his own weight any more. “...Can't...”

“Don't you dare,” James answered, one arm around Cap's torso, the other pressed to his chest. “Do you know how much you fucking weigh? Don't you dare tell me _you_ can't.”

“I...'m...”

“And don't tell me you're sorry, either,” James said again. “That shit's for sayin' when you don't got another chance.”

Cap was getting worse, eyelashes sparkling and fluttering, fingers fixed and red – damned fingerless gloves – walking almost on his ankles half the time just because he couldn't lift his feet.

“We're maybe half an hour out,” James told him. “We are half an hour out and then you're getting warm and you'll go to sleep and we'll- don't you fucking dare, alright?”

Cap's foot scraped along the path, and James could see where the water in his uniform had frozen, icy crystals visible in the pitiful glow of the intermittent moonlight.

“Ah,” Cap said softly, tilting his head back, teeth bared and quite clearly in pain, “ah...”

James looked up at the moon, trying to figure out if the current break in the clouds would be long enough to get his bearings, and saw instead a huge, inky-black shape blotting out the sky, stretching all the way back to the horizon.

“Four hours my ass. Okay,” he said, hitching Cap up as best he could, “okay, we gotta move.”

~

“Widow!” Hill shouted, her voice rising and falling in the wind, “report!”

“All trucks accounted for,” she shouted back, hopping down out of the cab, the snowflakes stinging her cheeks. “We lost Barnes and Rogers – what's their-”

“Search and Rescue can't get out to the checkpoint until tomorrow,” Hill answered, emerging out of the snow in front of them. “We're trying to track them - they're close to the bunker.”

“And the storm?” Clint shouted.

Hill shook her head, hand up to try and shield her eyes from the snow as the rest of the welcome vehicles loomed out of the darkness, their lights bright in the nothingness that seemed to surround them.

“We don't know,” she shouted, “that's what I mean – the storm's causing interference. It's gonna be close!”

~

James stripped him naked as soon as the door slammed shut behind them, letting him fall to the floor to make the job easier. The howling outside seemed eerie in the empty bunker, but the storm had caught them maybe fifteen minutes before and they were both covered in snow.

He got down to his knees and Cap's helmet went first – his hair was sodden and James couldn't tell how cold Cap was because he couldn't feel much himself. Not with his flesh hand at least – the sensors in his metal arm told him Cap's body-temperature was terrifyingly low, and he had no way to check the core temperature either short of shoving two fingers clean into Cap's body through his belly button.

Cap had stopped shivering now and that, _that_ was dangerous, _that_ was serious, as though somehow walking ten miles in ice-water-soaked combat gear was a walk in the fucking park.

“Shit, Cap,” he muttered, tugging at the clasps on Cap's uniform, wrenching the material back.

It crackled as he did so, the ice within making the fabric stiff and uncooperative and, in the end, James didn't care. He tore at it, using his metal fingers to rend whatever wouldn't cooperate, from Cap's upper body armor right the way down to his bootlaces, from his undersuit right down to his half-frozen socks and underwear.

Cap didn't even protest, not even when it transpired that the fabric had frozen to his goddamned _body hair_.

Then James stripped off his own outerwear from his top half, leaving his earpiece in, and hauled Cap into his arms with a groan that echoed back off the walls at him.

There was a radio here, and a kitchen – and he knew there was a fireplace in the kitchen.

~

He found blankets, and two coats, in a storage closet on their way, and there were towels in the kitchen too – Cap didn't put up much of a fight when James dried him head to toe, scrubbing the towel through Cap's hair and then down over Cap's chest, drying between his legs because it was wet and cold and should have been dry and warm, drying his extremities because they were ice fucking cold.

Cap moved a little, stuttered some, but he wasn't anywhere near as coherent as would have been safe.

The fire was an actual damned wood fire, and James spent far too long making the thing from scratch. It was another thing he knew how to do unless he thought too hard about it, and he hated doing it with Cap wrapped in the first blanket and two coats he'd been able to drag from a storage closet. Cap's head, too was shrouded in a towel, and he lay exactly where James had left him, his dark eyes glassy and half-closed, his breaths coming slow and quiet. His lips were blue and for one awful moment, one single second that James knew he'd spend the rest of his life hating himself for, he wondered what he'd have to do to keep Cap in suspension so that this wouldn't kill him, what he'd have to do to let this take over and just freeze him again until help arrived.

And then he hooked his hands under Cap's armpits, the skin there dry and cool, and hauled him backward towards the furnace. You weren't supposed to heat a person this way, he knew that, but you _were_ supposed to put a person into a warm environment, and the whole place would stay like the inside of a refrigerator unless he could get the fire up.

He grabbed a pot, didn't particularly care which kind, and filled it with water before shoving it right in amongst the logs and paper. If the pot got scorched, he really couldn't give a shit – he'd make hot chocolate when it boiled, hot and packed with sugar.

He went back to Cap, picked him up and took a look at him and, even over the cold, he felt his hackles rise.

Cap's eyes were closed. And James couldn't tell for sure, but he was pretty sure Cap wasn't breathing.

***

Six hours. Six hours from their arrival at the base – not even six from the moment they'd left Cap and Barnes in the middle of nowhere, but six from their _arrival,_ and they could get hide nor hair of either of them out of the radio.

Natasha had left, supervising the next stage of the organization after they'd made rendezvous – they'd been able to send a message out but he had no idea if it had been received - and Clint was waiting in the Comms room while someone tried to reach Barnes and Rogers.

They'd lost the signal on Barnes' standard tracker maybe four hours after it had stood still in the general vicinity of the bunker, the storm too thick, but they each had another.

They both had Starktech to keep them on radar. Steve's was fixed behind the star on his chest, and Barnes' was tucked into one of the components in his arm – which had taken one hell of a lot of convincing. In the end, Barnes had installed it himself.

Both signals had been completely still for as long as the standard trackers had been dark, so the only thing they had now was two weak pips every sixty minutes - and that was only because Stark had designed a homing beacon that meant either Supersoldier could be relegated to the seventh circle of hell and they'd still be able to find them.

Steve had _asked_ for it, in a rare moment of vulnerability – outright answered the standard “what do you need” question with an answer just about nobody at all had been expecting.

 _Something that'll let you find us. No matter_ where _we are._

Providing, of course, they were both still in their uniforms, because nobody had yet figured out how to implant it in a way that meant it wouldn't just pop on out of there within two days.

Healing factors were the bane of Clint's existence, he could swear.

Still, if the trackers were standing still, it meant Cap and Barnes were too – and they couldn't be sure with the weather so bad that the pair of them had reached the bunker. Whatever had happened to them, they were at least very obviously together.

Maybe, for them, that was the best Clint could hope for at this point.

~  
_  
He could feel it happening again, could feel it all in the back of his mind – like a slice of glass through his chest, it all came up around him and there was no radio, there was no light and no sound, just the muted death sweeping up around him as he plunged downward. He couldn't move, couldn't cry, couldn't breathe, he knew he was sinking and he remembered to think 'let it be this time, if I'm lost, let me stay lost,' and it was cold, so cold it burned, burned his eyes and his hands and his face and his lungs and he could feel it, clinging like fingers, tugging him downward like an anchor._

_He was going to die, it must be this, or was this the same as last time-_

_Bucky-_

_was he going to sink or was this how it happened, the cold and the paralysis and was he going to wake alone, alone again, alone completely, a hundred years away when he'd only just gotten Bucky back?_

~

Cap stirred eventually, wriggling around in his blanket-coat cocoon just as James was hurriedly unfurling the sleeping bags he'd found in storage.

“B-Buck?” Cap rasped, and James had to stop for a moment so that he didn't collapse in relief or something, pressed his hand to his mouth and closed his eyes and just breathed.

Cap's movement had scared the hell out him, his voice more so, but James hadn't expected him to wake for another hour or so.

“Buh-Bucky!?” Cap said again, louder this time, a sharper edge to it, and Cap flopped half out of his little warm haven just as James turned to look at him, stilling once he caught sight of him. “Oh.”

“Oh?” James said, raising his eyebrows. _“Oh?”_

Cap looked confused for a moment until James marched towards him.

“You get your _dumb Brooklyn ass_ ,” he said, shoving Cap down against the floor, “back under that _fucking blanket_ ,” he tugged up the sides of the fabric and tipped Cap's body to and fro before he yanked the towel down over Cap's head, “and shut the _fuck up_ ,” and if Cap cowered then _good._

He gave Cap one more shove and walked back to the damned sleeping bags.

Cap didn't say anything for a minute after that, the only noise some shuffling around way behind James until James had finished setting the sleeping bags down.

“Did-did the convoy-”

“Made rendezvous,” James answered without looking at him. “No thanks to you.”

The silence this time was short, the shuffling loud. James turned to look at him to find Cap clawing his way out of his cocoon.

“F-Fine,” he said. “Where are my c-clothes?”

“In shreds by the door,” James snapped, leaning on the tabletop.

“Well guh- _ha_ \- good job we're in a base with s-standard equipment then,” Cap snapped back, blankets around his thighs.

Still naked aside from them, he looked like an idiot.

“Oh, don't tell me,” James said, “you're gonna wander around the base with your dick out until you locate a set of shorts.”

“I d-don't know, Buck, y-you got a better idea or -”

“ _Get back in the fucking blankets!_ ” James said, taking a good three steps forward.

Cap sat on his bare ass on the hard floor, still shivering, and raised one eyebrow.

“Muh-Make me.”

James went very still, went Winter-Soldier-still, because he knew Cap didn't like it. Cap's eyes narrowed and he settled his elbows on his knees, waiting.

“G-Gonna kill me, Buck?” he said, and that was what James hated, that same casual tone, that same stupid I-don't-care-what-you-do-to-me tone of fucking voice bringing all their past issues up again.

“James,” James corrected, and that, that hurt, he saw it.

Only for a second, but there was something in Cap's eyes that there hadn't been before.

“Are you going to k-kill me,” Cap said, with very careful emphasis, “James?”

“Yes,” James told him. “That's why I dragged your sorry ass through three hours of snow and ice, that's why I wrapped you up in fucking blankets, that's why I started a fire and fed you somethin' warm so you wouldn't-”

“Then why are you _ha_ -actin' like I -”

“So help me, Cap, get back in your fucking blankets.”

“Make me,” Cap said again.

James tried hard, he tried very hard, to just breathe, to just breathe nice and quietly because they never got anywhere like this, he knew that much. They were just as stubborn and pig-headed as they'd always been and one letting the other push never solved anything but boy oh boy did he want to sock Cap in the jaw right about now.

“Get back under the blankets.”

“M-ake. Me.”

“Do you know how long it took to warm you the fuck up?” James shouted, and Cap crossed his bare arms over his bare chest – James could already see the goosebumps.

“Great job,” he said. “When does the f-feeling in my fingers come back?”

“You fucking ingrate,” James answered and, without a moment's hesitation, Cap shouted right back at him.

“I didn't do it on p-purpose!”

James stared at him and, for a minute or two, the only noise was the sound of the popping wood and the blood roaring in his ears.

“Get back in your fucking blankets, Cap,” he said eventually.

“Steve,” Cap answered defiantly.

“Get back in your fucking blankets, _Steve_ ,” James spat, and Steve shrugged.

“Sure,” he said bitterly, turning away and wrapping himself up again, and James just stared at him.

In fact, he continued to stare until Steve was all cocooned up again, his head the only thing exposed – the back of his head was the only thing visible to James now.

And, for a moment, James was truly angry that Steve had done as he was told. It was quite clearly to spite James, to cut off their argument in a way that said nothing so much as _'I win'_ but, eventually, James just sneered at the back of Steve's head and went back to straightening out the sleeping bags.

There were two, and they were roomy on the inside, which James was hoping would help warm him up – trap the air and warm it and give them both a little more heat to help.

James was still cold. He'd only managed to find a spare shirt so far and, with his jacket by the door with Steve's clothes, the wind still howling miserably outside, there was no way he was warming up quickly any time soon.

The fire was still going, sure, but there weren't clothes for either of them. It felt weird, James' insides warm but his skin refusing to get with the program – like someone was wedging something cool between all the places that ought to touch. His thighs where the skin met skin, his cheek against his shoulder when he ducked his head to look for the bag's zipper, his ass cheeks when he shifted his stance.

James' toes were still numb, and his fingers were still freezing – the ones on his right hand anyway. The metal fingers were up to room temperature, and he was working mainly with his left hand for that reason. He could have ignored the sensors and stuck his hand in the fire if he wanted – it wouldn't have damaged him even if the sensors meant it would certainly register as pain. But there wouldn't be much good in it even if he did – he wouldn't be able to touch anything until it cooled down, could potentially burn himself if he forgot, and Steve would bitch at him, which was the last thing he needed when they were going to be lying on the kitchen floor for the next (probably) two days or so.

~

“Sleeping bag,” James said by way of an explanation, once both were set out in front of the fire.

Steve rolled onto his back and looked up at James, and then he looked at the sleeping bags.

“Y-you warm yet?” he said, and James just pointed at the one nearest to Steve.

“Get into yours,” he said. “I'm finding better clothes.”

***

“They're gonna be fine,” Clint said quietly, and Natasha didn't even look at him, waving through a couple more civilians.

“I know,” she said, and it might have sounded cold to anyone else, might have been convincing.

“I'm gonna head back up to Comms,” he told her. “They're looking at a break in the storm – it's not much but we might be able to get a little closer, see if they're really as still as they look.”

“Keep me updated,” she said, moving off to redirect a couple of stragglers.

Clint tilted his head but didn't say anything else as she left, turning back for Comms a moment later.

~

“We're waiting on that break,” Hill told him, pointing at the little patch on the screen that showed thinner cloud, a gap in the terrible weather. “Like this, it'll last five minutes.”

“Yeah, if it doesn't close before it reaches them.”

Hill just gave him her best tell-me-about-it expression and went back to scanning the radar.

“Last pip was almost an hour ago,” she said, “we're going to fixate and overlay, and we'll see if we can ping them to tell where they are.”

“Can you get enough of a signal to speak to them?” Clint asked, and Hill tilted her head a little,s crewing up her face.

“We'll try, but it's impossible to tell one way or the other. There's a satellite, if we can get the signal through.”

Clint nodded.

“All right,” he said, watching the little red clock in the corner of her screen count down.

59:57

59:58

59:59

00:00

There it was, the quadruple zero flashing on the screen as two tiny red ripple marks, like a stone thrown into a pond, emanated out from the middle of the storm.

“Got it?” Hill asked, and someone else confirmed. “Move in, I need to know where they are.”

And Clint watched as they manipulated the mapping system to hone in on the two little red pip marks. The marks were flashing now because they'd been recorded, although the clock had started over, and all that was currently visible on the screen was the huge weather front stretching from one side of the map to the other.

“ETA on that break!” she said, and someone else shouted back.

“Three minutes,” and then, “but it looks like a three minute window.”

~

They weren't sleeping. It was difficult to sleep with the noise outside and the knowledge that they were the only ones here. This place didn't look like a HYDRA nest, but something about the starkness of it, the utilitarianism, was just enough to wake the association in the back of his mind.

Steve certainly wasn't sleeping – James could hear his teeth chattering and, although CPR had turned out to be unnecessary (what he'd thought was not-breathing was just barely-breathing), Steve still shouldn't be this cold so long after they'd made it inside.

He'd managed to find shorts and a shirt for both of them – clothes which, while not warm were at least dry – and Steve was hunkered down in his sleeping bag, but James could see the quaking of his shoulders.

He was just about to say something, although he hadn't figured out what, when the earpiece lodged into his ear whistled painfully loudly.

He ducked out of instinct, clawed the thing out and drove his finger in instead, wincing as he hissed through his teeth.

“Y-You okay?” Steve asked, and James looked at the small piece of black plastic where it now sat on the floor.

~

“They're inside,” Clint said, as soon as the image came through – it was fuzzy, there was plenty of interference, but both dots were clearly inside the threshold of the base. “Barnes is moving.”

And, in fact, Barnes was moving around in the kitchen area, crossing the room, walking back.

“Sir, break in the storm's reducing to about one minute, closing all the time.”

Steve's dot, however, was resolutely still, just inside the front door, and there was no way Barnes would leave him unless...

“Ping them now, ping them _right now,_ ” Clint said. “We need to get through and we need to do it now.”

~

'.... .. ...... ........ .. ... .....'

James narrowed his eyes at the thing and, over by the fire, Steve shuffled around until he could roll onto his back.

“You hear that?” he said, and James nodded, crossing toward it.

“I hear it.”

'.... .. _Winter Soldier, do you copy?_ '

James reached out for it, picking it up to shove it back in his ear.

_" Base to Winter Soldier, do you copy?”_

“Barnes,” James said, “I copy. That you, Barton? You trying to deafen me?”

_“Yeah, it's me – sorry about that. Can you give me an update?”_

James glanced at Steve.

“Made it about fifteen minutes after the storm hit,” he said, but Barton apparently wasn't satisfied.

 _“Barnes, we...”_ he said, and he seemed to be choosing his words carefully when he spoke again. _“We can see you're in the base, in the kitchen according to the floor-plan, and your tracker's moving but...Barnes...”_

“He's alive – I had to strip him. His uniform was starting to freeze to him.”

Barton's sigh of relief over the link was audible, and James turned to give Steve a dirty look. Steve, to his surprise, was staring right back at him. He felt mildly guilty that he'd been caught making that expression, mildly rueful about making it directly at Steve, but mostly gratified at the way Steve's jaw tightened.

_“We're hoping to get a party out to you tomorrow but there's no guarantee. Storm's not as predictable as we'd like.”_

“Hypothermia's under control,” James answered, at which Steve frowned. “We've food for a week or so and we've got sleeping bags. Internal heating system should keep us watered, too – but the clothes are standard issue underwear. We're in shorts and t-shirts here.”

 _“I'll get 'em to put hot water bottles on the list,”_ Barton answered, the smartass.

“Yeah, put it right under 'thermal underwear and fleece lined parkas.”

Barton laughed over the line.

 _“You sure you're -onna be -kay?”_ he said.

“Should be,” James said, “but listen, I'm losing you.”

_“Ca-.....................-.me? We o-.....................-have another cha-.....................-cation if-”_

“I'm losing you,” James told him again, pressing his finger to his ear as he shut his eyes, trying to hear what was coming through without the distraction of Steve's gaze, trying to keep the inexplicable bubble of panic from rising up in the back of his throat – they were safe, they were alive, Base had a location, what was there to panic about?

 _“We-.....................-storm-.....................-row...”_ Barton answered.

And then there was only static.

James sighed, shook his head and turned to face Steve.

“Lost the signal,” he said.

Steve looked at him for a moment longer, gaze travelling from James's face all the way down to his boots. And then he rolled onto his side to face the fire again, showing James his back.

Steve always did trust too much – lucky James was on his side.

~

“What happened?” Hill said, frowning over at the youngish curly-haired tech who'd patched them through. “We lost them?”

“Sorry,” he said. “The storm closed up around them.”

“Still,” Barton told her, “you heard. Alive and kicking.”

“Probably each other,” Hill answered. “Make sure the rescue party know what they're doing. I want a jet ready for takeoff as soon as the weather's clear.”

“Yes, Ma'am,” the tech answered, and Hill turned around to leave.

“Anyone seen Romanoff?”

***  
It was the middle of the goddamn night, so late into the night that it was getting to be morning, and Steve must have been exhausted, but that wasn't stopping him. He was lying as still as he could manage in his sleeping bag, trying to keep quiet enough that James could sleep, but James wasn't about to sleep.

James wasn't even near ready to sleep, and neither was he really ready to admit that it was mostly the fault of the stomach-dropping sound that was still replaying itself in his mind – the instantly recognizable crack and groan of breaking ice – and, worse, the moment that, as if in slow motion, Steve had disappeared bodily into water so black that James hadn't even been able to see him.

He wasn't going to think about the last time he'd felt like that, about the last time he'd watched Steve fall helplessly away from him into water and had to drag him back to save his life. Neither did he think about why it had happened last time.

But, although Steve was actually able to shiver again, each tremor shifted his body against the inside of the sleeping bag. He sounded like a party of crickets.

“Are you _still_ cold?” James asked, and Steve huffed a shivery kind of laugh.

“I t-told you,” he said, turning his head just enough that James could see he'd done so. “I told you hours ago.”

James ground his teeth for a moment and then he sat up and looked at the messy blonde hair on the back of Steve's head, and the thin sliver of peach and white where the blanket had slipped down off his shoulders.

“Steve, how bad is it?”

Steve didn't answer him immediately, hesitating far too long.

“Steve?” James said again, and Steve jerked a little, as though he were on the edge of sleep.

“Huh?”

“How bad is it?” James asked again, pushing his sleeping bag down bout his hips to extricate himself from it, crawling across the floor.

The room was warmer, but by no means was it warm.

“My fingers won't...my toes are cold, everything's-”

James pressed his hand to the side of Steve's face – his cheeks were cold – and then down to Steve's underarm – also cold – and then Steve waved a belated hand to brush him away, and Bucky captured his fingers – like ice.

“You stupid bastard,” James told him, tugging the zipper down.

Steve gasped, tried to reach out to close the thing back up again, but James batted his hands away.

“Shut up,” he said when Steve made a noise in the back of his throat, “you idiot, you're lips are going purple.”

“Would you q-quit bawlin' me out?” Steve whispered on a rush of air that didn't warm James' face the way he expected it to. “I told you I didn't...”

Steve swallowed hard and James narrowed his eyes, taking Steve's chin in his metal fingers.

“...mean to,” Steve finished, eyes not quite focusing on James.

“Such a prick - I just told them you were fine five hours ago!”

Steve's open expression closed remarkably fast, and he turned his head out of James' grasp.

“Watch your fucking mouth,” he said, slurring a little, and James let him keep his damned head where he wanted if he wanted.

Instead, James shoved himself into the sleeping bag beside Steve, ignoring the sound of protest he made in order to zip the thing up instead.

“Quiet,” James told him, shoving himself up against Steve so there was no space between them. “You wanna freeze to death? Turn over and face me.”

“I'm...I'm trying,” he answered, and he was, a testament to how terrible he must feel that he was doing as James told him.

James helped anyway, making enough room and then gathering him close and pulling Steve's head down against his neck, and Steve's whole body shuddered on his next breath out, spine bowing down. Iisus _Khristos_ he was cold, his feet were like ice, so cold they felt wet even though James knew they were dry.

“Bucky?” Steve said, his voice muffled, his mouth moving against James' throat and his nose cold under James' jaw.

“You're too cold,” James told him, “you're too cold and you're not warming up by yourself.”

James could picture this, could picture trying to warm Steve up when Steve was too stubborn to tell him if it was working, could picture Steve's shuddering tapering off to nothing while James tried to get his own body heat to bleed into him, could picture himself drifting off at some point in the night or misunderstanding somehow, and could picture Steve falling nicely and peacefully asleep without telling James it wasn't working, and then never waking up again.

He started to rub warmth into any part of Steve that he could reach, starting with the back of his neck, stroking with palms and fingertips as he blew warm air against Steve's temple through his nose and mouth while Steve shivered enough to rattle both of them.

He moved on to Steve's shoulders next, stroking over and around trying to encourage the circulation. He scrubbed his palm over Steve's biceps, over Steve's forearms, and then he lifted Steve's hands to his mouth to curl them into fists and blow warm air through them one at a time.

“God, it's cold,” Steve whispered, a rush of cool air against James' throat, and James lifted one hand to the back of his head.

“I know,” he said, “I know, hold on.”

James couldn't tell if Steve's nose was getting warmer or if his own throat was just getting colder, but there had to be _some_ kind of transfer going on.

“Can you rub your feet together?” James asked him quietly, and it took a second or two but James could feel him trying, a slow, catching drag of limbs he wasn't quite feeling enough to be in control of. “Legs, just your legs, can you do that for me?”

That seemed easier, that seemed like something Steve could manage, except that James was going to have to be damned careful Steve didn't knee him in the nuts by accident.

“Good, okay,” James told him, “okay, hold still, you move your legs but keep the rest still. Okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” Steve answered, pressing his face a little closer.

There wasn't enough room in the sleeping bag for this, but damned if James was going to tell him so.

James went back to rubbing his back, ignoring the unpleasant, unnatural coldness of his skin through the cotton shirt.

“You run four times faster than normal people, how are you this cold?”

“Buck, if I knew that-”

“I know,” James said, “I know, just keep quiet or somethin'.”

Steve just huffed another laugh, small and weak.

“I said quiet,” James said again. “Duck your head down and breathe into the bag.”

Steve actually did, and his legs slowed as he breathed against James' chest. It was at least warm, and James would have to be careful of the humidity of it – while it might be warm now, they'd both feel the chill if Steve raised his head again.

James set his hand on the nape of Steve's neck, finding Steve's fingers with his other hand. Steve's nose, when he bumped it against James' collar bone, wasn't nearly so cold and, while his toes were cool, he'd already warmed his legs.

“That's it, you're getting' there,” he said, and Steve just kept right on breathing, slow and steady, breaths growing steadily warmer between them, the cold in his fingers not quite so sharp. “You complete fucking idiot.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Me too.”

And for a couple of seconds, James wondered if Steve had misheard him. And then he realized Steve had heard him perfectly.

***  
By the time the fire had died down enough that James was going to have to get up to stoke it, Steve was in a fairly light sleep with his back to James' chest. His fingers were back to fairly normal, warm enough that they were dry and warm in James' own, and his feet, their legs curled up together, were normal enough that the soles were pressed to James' instep without discomfort.

Steve, it seemed, had never truly grown used to being the big spoon and maybe even – although James would never be callous or stupid enough to mention it – still enjoyed being the little spoon. Not, of course, that he'd ever admitted to enjoying it before.

With the metal arm under Steve's neck, the flesh arm over Steve's wasp-waist with their hands joined over Steve's stomach, the rise and fall of Steve's chest and stomach as he breathed was enough to have James half-asleep himself.

“Steve,” he said, tilting his head forward.

Steve was closer than he'd anticipated, semi-lucid as he was, and he ended up bumping his nose on the nape of Steve's neck.

“Mmmh?” Steve said, in that thick, breathy way that said he wouldn't be awake except for having a question to answer.

“I have to put more wood on the fire,” James said, and Steve's fingers tightened a little around his own.

“ 'm warm,” he said, and James nodded slowly, pressing his forehead to the back of Steve's shoulder as he yawned.

Steve had a point – it was blissfully warm now that they'd settled. Steve's body temperature had come up to normal for the most part, and James knew that, as soon as he moved, the air between them would grow cold, and the air outside the bag would be colder still.

“I know,” he answered, all too aware of the fact that they were both in shorts and t-shirts, and thin ones at that. “But we're both gonna freeze again if I don't get the heat up in here.”

Steve turned his head against Bucky's metal arm, using it to move the hair off his forehead, and he released James' hand, moved his feet away from James' feet, curling up on himself.

“Go fast,” he said, no longer stuttering, no longer shivering, and James nodded, turning onto his back to scrub his flesh hand over his face.

“Yeah.”

He only tugged the zipper halfway down, hearing Steve's hiss a moment after he moved. Steve curled up on himself even more tightly, and James pulled himself out of the sleeping bag to try and minimize how much cold air could get in, zipping it up once he was free.

His skin came out in goosebumps immediately, the plates on his metal arm clicking together in reaction, and he didn't bother trying to suppress the next shiver even as he yawned again.

Stoking the fire was easy, thank God – all he really needed to do was shove more wood in and shuffle everything around with the poker before he could go back to Steve.

Steve was back under by then, asleep once more in less than three minutes. His long lashes rested against his cheekbones and his lips, while dry, were as full and as pink as they should have been, parted around soft breaths. His eyelids were a little too purple, the shadows beneath the lashes a little too pronounced, but considering what they'd both been through the night before, it wasn't a surprise.

“Hey,” he said, and Steve's eyes opened just enough that he could see them glitter.

“Hi,” Steve breathed. “Back in?”

“Yep,” James answered, and he took the zipper down just enough to wiggle down inside the sleeping bag, tugging it up a moment later.

He shuddered against Steve, something that couldn't be helped given how little room there was to move, and the slid his metal arm under Steve's neck again, draped his flesh arm back over Steve's waist. He pressed his face deliberately against Steve's back to warm his cheeks, brought his legs forward to fit his knees against the back of Steve's, and Steve's big, warm (thank God) hand slid up his forearm and back before the fingers wound around his own.

“Okay?” he said, turning his head back, and he sounded a little more awake this time.

“Mmm,” James answered, moving his head away again. “Fire's good for another couple hours.”

“Good,” Steve said on a rush of air, sighing heavily a moment later.

Steve lay still again for a little while after that, and James took another minute or two to understand what felt different – Steve was still curled forward a little, the muscles of his stomach bunched under James' hand, his now-cooler shoulder blades well away from James' chest.

“Come here,” he said, sliding his hand up Steve's torso to ease him backward.

He didn't miss the flinch when his hand got to about sternum-height either, and frowned at the back of Steve's neck.

“What was that?” he said, hand stilling instantly. “You hurt somewhere?”

There _couldn't_ be an injury he didn't know about – not an external one at least – and if there was an _internal_ injury they were screwed, because they only had preliminary first aid, and James was _not_ a medic. He'd thought Steve was cold, tired, overworked, had been dunked in ice water and only to have to walk ten miles to the nearest inside-place, and then been too cold to sleep. But, while internal bleeding would have explained why he couldn't warm up to begin with, Steve healed.

“Steve?” he said, and Steve actually lifted his head to look at him, cheeks stained red.

“Just cold,” he said, and James thought about it for a second. “Extremities. Skin.”

“Okay,” he said softly, this wasn't a problem.

It wasn't like James hadn't already spent a couple of hours rubbing warmth into Steve, he could keep going a little longer.

He managed to get Steve's fingers out of his own, managed to nudge Steve's wrist up until Steve put his hand in James' metal hand instead, and then he started trying to ease the warmth back in the same way as before, in long, smooth strokes that covered Steve's torso from collarbone to waistband and back again.

Steve lay still, breathing steadily, and James swept his palm over Steve's collar bones, his pectorals, his stomach, up and down in long swathes, across in short, smooth movements.

James could see what Steve meant, though – the chill that had made it into the sleeping bag when James left had leached a little of the heat out of of their cocoon, something he couldn't help, but Steve's calves were warming against James' shins again, his nipples hard under James' hands, the goosebumps James could feel through the cotton fading as the hair on the back of Steve's neck slowly lay flat again.

Steve flinched the next time James made a pass over his chest, sharp intake of breath belying the discomfort – James didn't even need to check what it was. Steve's nipples were like pebbles, small and hard and, from the sound of the noise he made, cold enough that they were tight and painful. He watched the back of Steve's neck turn pink, and settled his forearm over Steve's chest instead to cover both – regardless of whatever embarrassment Steve felt, James had felt the same thing more than once, and it was more than enough to make sleep difficult.

“S'okay,” James told him, closing his eyes as he squeezed Steve a little closer. “It's okay, go back to sleep.”

***  
James woke because Steve's breathing changed, because he'd been trained to react when people's breathing changed.

He wasn't sure that Steve was awake, but there was definitely a difference. Moving into REM maybe, or out of it, and James was content to listen for minute or two to make sure Steve was sleeping silently.

It was only about ten to fifteen seconds before Steve's breathing evened out again, and James let his eyes fall closed, shifting himself to regain the comfort he'd lost by being on alert. He ducked his head down a little more, tucked his legs up closer behind Steve's, metal fingers squeezing Steve's fingers as he moved his flesh hand an inch-

There it was again, there was the change. A higher tone, an open mouth, almost a gasp but not quite, and James waited again, trying to figure out what the catalyst for this was.

This time, Steve's breathing didn't go back to normal, and James was about to try and wake him when he tilted his head back a little on the metal arm and blew out a long, slow breath through pursed lips – far too controlled for him to be sleeping.

James was opening his mouth to say something when something changed under his hand, and it took him a moment to understand what it was.

He could have said something, maybe he _should_ have aid something, but he recognised the small, hard point of flesh that rose against his inner forearm, the matching point of pressure pushing up under the heel of his hand. Steve's body temperature rose perhaps two degrees, the color of his skin darkening enough that James could see and, for a moment, he didn't know what on earth he ought to do.

They'd been pressed together for hours, and James had kept his arm over Steve's chest specifically to warm him there. This was obvious arousal, made heat curl low in James' stomach along with the kind of interest that was at once familiar and new, and James shifted his arm just sightly, curling his fingers too to see what would happen.

Steve's breath faltered, shuddered, and James could have stopped, but he didn't want to. There was something about that noise that was better than the warmth they were sharing, better than the breaths James could feel against his body. Something about that sound, and the way Steve's body had reacted already, just _made sense_ after today, seemed to slot into a place that fit, as though this were supposed to happen next.

If Steve were making that sound, if that sound were making that low, heated interest burn brighter, why shouldn't James be allowed to hear it? He'd thought before he might never hear any sounds from Steve again – why shouldn't he take advantage of this?

He moved his thumb, just a little, just to pass the pad over Steve's nipple, the other one still hard against his arm, and Steve seemed to stretch beneath him, his whole body straining forward just barely enough that it might pass for instinctive. So James did it again.

“Bucky,” Steve murmured, his voice low and rough, a plea if James had ever heard one, and James turned his head to press his lips to the back of Steve's neck.

Steve shuddered against him, dropping his head forward to expose more skin, and part of James knew it for vulnerability, part of him whispered in the back of his mind that this was submissive, this was an error, this was opening himself up to attack.

But the rest of him knew that Steve _liked this_. This was something Steve enjoyed, something Bucky _remembered_ that Steve enjoyed, and it was easy, and enjoyable, to give him something like this after he'd fallen so suddenly, after they'd walked so far, after they'd been so cold for so long.

Bucky moved Steve's hands, shuffled them around until both of Steve's hands were held in his own – the metal one, the one under Steve's head – so that it left his body unguarded--

_vulnerable, open to attack--_

and stroked his palm from the center of Steve's chest right the way down to his navel, applying just enough pressure to ease Steve's body back against his own.

“Buck,” Steve said, a whisper this time, and Bucky didn't need to look to know he'd closed his eyes, didn't need to see his long lashes sweep down or the running of his tongue over his lower lip to know what he was doing.

Bucky didn't need to speak to ask, to hesitate because he _remembered_ this, and he opened his mouth to press a kiss, long and hot and wet to the back of Steve's neck so that Steve instinctively turned his head to seek his mouth.

Steve kissed like Bucky remembered him kissing, desperate and close and curled up, all twisted up just to reach him, and Bucky skimmed the pad of his flesh thumb over Steve's right nipple just to feel the jolt his body gave. This would go too quickly if he let Steve lead them, would be over in the blink of an eye if he let them both give in to this, if Steve twisted towards him and poured everything into this.

He pulled away, left Steve breathing heavily in the dimness and slowly, slowly settled himself back again, pressing his nose and mouth the short, soft hair on the back of Steve's head, nosing against it as he stroked the same line back up.

Steve didn't need to be told to keep quiet, didn't need to be made to keep still – this was the way they could fight sometimes, the sentences they didn't need to finish. Bucky didn't need to tell him because Steve already knew, Steve already wanted the same thing, and Steve would keep quiet and let Bucky do this slowly because he wanted it to last as much as he wanted to feel it.

He settled quickly, pliant in Bucky's arms the way he always had been, _the way it should be_ , and Bucky made his fingers feather-light to trail them down Steve's ribcage, rubbed his cheek against Steve's neck and let Steve feel him breathe, warm air over warm skin.

Steve's breaths were fast and shallow, and Bucky knew how to tease in stages, knew how to make it last, make him wait.

Steve was warm, ran hotter now, so he said, and he was a long, solid wall of heat from Bucky's face all the way down to their toes.

Bucky lifted his flesh hand and ran the back of his fingernails along the underside of Steve's right pectoral through the thin cotton tee, towards his heart, and Steve's next breath in clicked in his throat, chest expanding under Bucky's fingers, back expanding against Bucky's chest.

Bucky did it again, dragging his fingertips back along the same path, and Steve turned his head to press his forehead to Bucky's metal bicep, his cheek to it, his mouth. Bucky passed his fingertips up over Steve's collarbone, along to the dip between them and down over his sternum, and Steve's muscles shifted as he did his best not to move, did his best to wait for Bucky to do as he pleased.

Bucky ran the tips of his fingernails across the plain of Steve's pectoral, under his collarbone first and then sweeping lower with each pass, and he felt the tension across Steve's shoulder ratchet up with each centimeter.

When he stopped, just shy of Steve's nipple, to follow the outside of his pectoral again, Steve made a sound – a quiet, desperate little thing too low and rough to be a whimper, body hunching over as much as it could without foiling Bucky's movements.

Bucky stroked his palm down Steve's stomach again, over each tense muscle, up onto his waist and down to rub at his hipbone. It was still pronounced and hard, but not the way it had been once – not jutting and sharp.

He swept his hand up and started again, on Steve's left pectoral, couldn't reach all the way under to the side of him because of how they lay, but it didn't matter. Fingertips moving along the underneath of the muscle, and back, along his collarbone, nails whispering across the skin, and it was difficult, Bucky found, to go as slowly, to maintain his pace. Something made it difficult to keep his fingers the way they were, made it difficult to stop before the sensitive flesh, made it difficult to withold the pleasure he knew he could inflict.

When Bucky started over and kept his pace, when Bucky reached Steve's right nipple again and stopped, Steve's whole body hitched beneath him.

“Please,” he whispered, barely audible, perhaps inaudible to someone without the serum, and he breathed so quickly it was hard to keep count, his body thrumming with anticipation.

Bucky rubbed the pad of his thumb so lightly over Steve's nipple that it only grazed the hard, tight point of it through the cotton, and the muscles in Steve's thighs bunched, head twitching back against Bucky's as he gasped, his fingers flexing. Bucky kept the pad of his thumb there, circling slowly, dragging the cotton against his fingerprint, the rough, puckered skin beneath straining up to meet it.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, to say something, to question what he knew to be true as though his own voice were speaking in his head - _you like that?_ murmured soft and low, hot against Steve's ear. But words barely came to him at the best of times, words were hard to say and difficult to work up to, and he didn't need to ask, he didn't need to check, he already knew. If he already knew and the words were hard to say, why would he ever ask? _Don't ask stupid questions,_ and some things are need-to-know and those voices were not his, those words were not his words, but the deep-rooted sense of when to question seemed to gnaw at the back of his mind.

Consent, Bucky remembered, and perhaps that was what his brain was trying to tell him, perhaps he was supposed to ask to make sure he was wanted, to make sure he wasn't forcing Steve into something, to make sure what Steve wanted really was what Bucky was offering. Steve had taught him about things like consent and self-awareness and autonomy – things that had seemed to distant at the time, but he'd learned them. He knew them. Maybe that's what he was supposed to make sure of.

“You like that?” he said, and his voice came out strange; came out rougher and lower than it should have.

“Bucky,” Steve whispered, as though it had been punched out of him, a newer note of desperation in it.

Bucky knew the face Steve was making, didn't need to see him to know, knew how his eyes screwed up, knew how he bared his teeth, knew he seemed caught between pain and despair and felt neither of those things.

“Do you?” he asked, because his name was not an answer, no matter how it sounded.

Steve wouldn't fight him, Steve wouldn't hurt him, Steve wouldn't push him away whether this was what he wanted or not. Steve was strong and clever and good at defending himself except when it came to Bucky.

“Tell me,” Bucky said, “tell me or I'll stop it-”

“Please,” Steve said, his voice low and almost musical, a longer sound than ordinary words. “Please, I want it,” and that was good enough, that was a satisfactory answer.

Bucky didn't know why it warranted contact, why his instinct was to kiss, but instinct had served him well thus far and Steve had been receptive up until this point – dangerously so. He pressed his open mouth to the back of Steve's neck again, following with his tongue the path he set, because it ought to come next, he was sure, and Steve made a soft, rough sound in the back of his throat.

“Please,” he said again, despite the fact that Bucky was satisfied, but it was a welcome sound, something Bucky felt he ought to chase to hear again.

He moved his hand, the same movement but on the other side, and Steve right leg shifted forward an inch as he held the breath that stuttered inward.

It shouldn't have been possible, for so much to come of something so small, for such a response to be born out of the smallest circles of the soft pad of Bucky's thumb.

When he moved his hand back, he set his thumb next to that hard point instead, waiting as he scraped his teeth over the back of Steve's shoulder through his shirt. And then, slowly, he pressed his thumb down against the areola, the raised goosebumps at the edge and the softer inner skin, and dragged his thumb across the hard, small point of it, moving his thumb back again as soon as it was clear. He did it again, firm and slow, toward the center of Steve's chest and then back again, and Steve arched his back – Bucky felt him do it – to give himself more into that touch.

The right one had always been more sensitive, Bucky remembered that without trying, and he lifted his hand, curled his fingers into his pam and ran the points of his knuckles over the raised skin instead, and Steve gave another of those soft little sounds.

He went back to using the pad of his thumb in those same little circles, wondering just how long the flesh could stay hard before he warmed it too far, or before it grew desensitized, or before Steve had had enough, but Steve was still enjoying this.

Bucky could tell by the speed of his breathing, the strength of the pulse he could almost taste when he raised his head to kiss under Steve's ear, down the side of his neck. Steve tilted his head back and turned it, stretching out to let Bucky reach him better, and he didn't taste right – he was there, strong and rich, but there was something else. Something of a different kind of richness, and Bucky realized belatedly that it must be the wind and the water, the lake he'd fallen into, and he sank his teeth in before he remembered Steve might mark, before he remembered the marks wouldn't last.

Steve's mouth fell open on a gasp, body shivering from something that couldn't be the cold when he was this hot under Bucky's hands, but Bucky breathed against his skin anyway. Something in his memory told him he should – although whether it was for warmth or not was something different.

Bucky couldn't remember this with Steve, not the way he'd remember this. There were images, echoes of sounds Steve had made, flashes of something he was sure couldnt be a dream. It was too vivid, too colourful, there was too much depth to it for it to be fabricated.

Everything made sense about it, dark eyes and open mouths and hands too big for their arms, skin too tight on their ribs. Steve, he remembered. Steve. Small and sick and so very far from weak a fire burned in Stevie, his Stevie, bright enough to chase the shadows all away, to scatter all the light and-

Brooklyn-

Wooden floorboards, dust motes and wracking coughs and Steve liked things he didn't want to like, responded to things he pretended not to want, simple things and little things and things like this-

“Stevie,” used to like this, even when his body was small, even when his skin was always cool and their rooms were always too cold, even when he was angry at himself for being ill or being small or being a thousand other things that mattered not at all to Bucky-

Steve's body tensed under his, and he was going to pull away, to stop, to check, but Steve's fingers went tight around his wrist and in his palm, Steve's voice came out rougher and quieter, and he pressed his forehead to Bucky's arm, turned his face away from the rest of the world.

Maybe, Bucky figured, maybe it hadn't been the wrong thing to say – maybe it had been the right thing to say.

“Stevie,” he said again, and the tension in the back of Steve's thighs increased. I remember that. “Huh? You like that?”

It came out better this time, closer to what it was supposed to be, nearer to how it was supposed to feel in his mouth.

Steve moaned softly, hips hitching forward just a little, barely at all, and Bucky moved his hand. Rolled Steve's nipple between his thumb and forefinger through the cotton, pressed a line of kisses tho the top of Steve's spine out along his shoulder.

It wasn't a question that needed an answer, but that wasn't the point of the question.

There were lots of questions like that in his head, lots of words he could say that sounded like they needed an answer even if they didn't. Did Steve like that, is this what Steve wanted, was Steve going to stay quiet, was Steve going to co-

Impractical, orgasm was impractical in clothes Bucky had barely managed to scrounge but that was what the tension in the backs of Steve's thighs signified, that's what the muscle tremors led to – hips that rolled forward and back, rhythm steady enough that it wouldn't bring on a coughing fit-

Was Steve enjoying this? Did Steve want more, _was Steve going to ask nice, wasn't Steve sensitive, didn't Steve listen good and make pretty noises and wasn't he sweet flushed like a girl-_

No.

No. Steve did not like those last words, no, the same as words like sad and helpless, words like lazy or burden, words like bird or vegetable. No. Those words were things Steve was not.

Not for Steve, _for Stevie. The only words for Stevie should be-_

Of course. Of course – words for Steve, for Steve's heart and mind, words to soothe and comfort and reinforce and arouse, of course words could arouse, of course they were words for Steve.

Steve moved in minuscule amounts, as though he were afraid to move much more, and Bucky held him, breathed him in and tried to will his mouth to speak the words Steve wouldn't want to like.

 _Beautiful, good for me, gorgeous laid out like this_ , but the words were still too hard to say, still too hard to push from his chest and over his tongue even if Steve liked them.

He used his whole hand to stroke, from chest to stomach and stomach to chest, over the hard flesh and smooth muscle, over the defined shapes and the sweeping curves. Steve's body was different now, he knew this – knew it was different but loved it either way and, although he couldn't feel the ribs, he remembered feeling them.

It was something else he ought to share, something he knew Steve would like – Steve had told him, told him in the same breath as assuring him otherwise. _I don't care if you never remember._ But Bucky did remember things, and _I'm so proud of you, Buck._

“I remember this,” he said, and it sounded ridiculous, sounded like a plea for attention, came off his tongue like a whine but Steve kissed the metal plates his head rested on instead, breath hitching again in his throat.

Bucky kneaded the muscle of Steve's pectoral for a moment or two, moved to the other because Steve was unusual like this. It did nothing when Steve tried to do the same for Bucky – pleasant in the way that a held hand was pleasant, intimate in the way that a held hand was intimate. Personal and close and only for them, but not arousing.

But Steve liked this, gained a great deal from this, and he responded avidly and without fail.

Bucky caught one nipple between his fingers, ring and middle, with his palm against Steve's chest. He tried tugging lightly and was foiled an instant later when the cotton made his fingers slip – not acceptable. He tried again but the cotton was too soft and smooth, Steve's nipple was too small and hard, and he couldn't gain purchase properly.

Still, Steve seemed to like even that, squirming in a way that looked like all the times Bucky'd made him squirm before, wriggling in Bucky's grip not to get away but to stay. It was difficult sometimes, Bucky knew, to let your body do what it wanted, especially if you were trying to make it do something different at the same time. Steve was trying to keep still and his body was trying to move, and he'd squirmed like this so many times before that it was almost second nature to hold him still.

Bucky moved his hand, tried something else, caught Steve's nipple between the pads of his thumb and forefinger and rolled it, and Steve sounded wounded for a moment, sounded lost, a brief, breathy sound of something that wasn't discomfort but was just as intense.

“Mmh...Please,” he said again, and he couldn't be as close to tears as he sounded, but that had always been his way, too – his voice gave out at times like this, even though his breathing came easy now.

He could keep going like this, continue as though this were all he meant to do, but Steve was stopping his body, holding back already, and Bucky could remember him doing this, remember him biting back words - it had been just as hard for Steve to not-say words as it was now for Bucky to say them - and holding himself still, remembered Steve pulling Bucky's hand over his own mouth.

“Here,” Bucky told him, voice as soft as he could make it, and he edged away from Steve, let go of Steve's fingers.

Steve turned his head to look at him almost instantly, even through his obvious haze of arousal, afraid he'd startled Bucky into moving, upset him enough to make him stop. Steve's skin was gold in the dim glow from the fire, his eyes dark.

“On your back,” Bucky said, and he heard Steve swallow hard.

Still, Steve did as he was asked, shuffling about in the sleeping bag, limbs catching and tangling. Bucky narrowly avoided smacking his head on Steve's chin, felt Steve's hand graze his stomach in what could have been a punch if they'd been closer and less careful, and then Bucky was settling on his stomach, warmth at either side of him.

For a moment, he thought they should be the other way around, with James' legs outside Steve's, to help Steve conserve the heat, but Steve hugged Bucky's hips with his knees, hands by his sides as though he couldn't move them at all.

He considered his options even now – he hadn't been wrong before. They didn't have a change of clothes, didn't have the option to shower – certainly not in this facility. Even if they could get to the shower, they'd only be wet when they got out, more prone to losing body heat.

But they did have another sleeping bag.

Bucky shuffled back, carefully avoiding dragging his body against Steve's, until his shoulders were level with Steve's abdomen, and he looked down between their bodies as he swept his hand downward, fingertips running along the hem of Steve's shirt for a moment before dipping underneath. There was a gap between Steve's hip and the waistband of his shorts, where his cock was up and straining hard enough to pull the fabric away from his body. Bucky ignored it for the most part, only brushing his fingertips across the skin that had lain below the elastic. Steve's breathing ceased almost entirely, and Bucky would have been worried if he didn't know better. He let his hand linger there a moment before he tangled his fingers in the hem and drew the thin cotton shirt up over Steve's chest, without letting it touch his skin. And then he looked up at Steve, at Steve's body and Steve's face, at all the skin he'd bared and the look on Steve's face, and found he couldn't move for just a moment.

He was beautiful, gorgeous, made Bucky's mouth water, made his breath catch in his throat, made it difficult to swallow the saliva, made his tongue ache.

Steve's muscles were hard and defined, curved rectangles and flat plains all down his torso but, even with Bucky's hand pressed to Steve's stomach, Bucky's fingers resting in the grooves between the muscles, Steve's flawless chest was heaving, prickled with goosebumps, the smooth valley between his pectorals glittering with sweat and it felt like a prize, felt like a reward.

Bucky had seen Steve naked to strip him down and warm him up, had observed him cold and failing to warm himself while halfway out of his blankets, but this, this was different. This was the laying bare of something, the giving up of something – this was Steve leaving himself open and vulnerable to Bucky on purpose and Bucky just stared at him, shaking hands pressed to Steve's ribcage, one on either side, body settled snug between Steve's legs, with the whole of Steve's upper body set out for him.

Steve was chewing his lower lip, breaths coming hard and fast through his nose as he stared unblinkingly up at Bucky, and Bucky wanted this, Bucky actually wanted this. This wasn't a necessity to be sated, wasn't a function to be seen to and ignored, this was something he wanted, something he felt the heat of deep inside of his stomach, something that made his breath catch and his cock fill and his fingers twitch, something that made him wonder if he could just close his eyes and let his body lead, let the memories he didn't have guide the body he couldn't remember ever having so much control of.

He still didn't speak, still couldn't think of anything to say, and he watched the way Steve's body responded to him when he moved, watched the furrow of Steve's brow deepen when he shifted his hips, the roll of Steve's shoulders when he stroked the backs of his knuckles against Steve's ribcage.

Steve stopped chewing his lip, tongue darting out to soothe instead before his mouth hung open, breathing audible enough that Bucky couldn't ignore it.

“Bucky,” he said again, and Bucky lifted one of Steve's hands with his own, curling his fingers around Steve's to bring the pads of Steve's left index and middle fingers to his lips.

For a moment, Steve seemed to know what to do, following the line of Bucky's mouth with his fingertips the way Bucky expected him to do. And then Bucky opened his mouth and drew the tips of Steve's fingers past his lips to wet them with his tongue, and Steve's expression seemed almost to crumple, his mouth falling open as his brow furrowed, eyelids fluttering down for just a moment.

It wasn't much of a stretch to guess that Steve knew as well as Bucky did how to get warmth back into extremities quickly. You weren't supposed to do it – it warmed the outside without warming the inside, left the skin wet and cool when you moved away, but Steve's whole body shifted under him, and Bucky let Steve's fingertips slip from his mouth, his eyes on Steve, before he ducked his head and closed his mouth over Steve's right nipple.

He tasted salt and sweat and the strange taste of the lakewater, felt Steve's body arch up under him as Steve's head fell back. The strangled noise Steve gave him only served as encouragement, and Bucky warmed with his mouth where the skin had begun to cool again since he'd exposed it.

With his right hand, he stroked the pads of his fingers over Steve's left nipple in tandem with the soothing swipes of his tongue under the seal of his lips, and he knew not to move them too quickly. Speed meant roughness meant desensitization, and that wouldn't do.

He worried the hard flesh with his teeth on one side, pinching with his fingers on the other as he held Steve's body steady with the metal arm. Steve's cock was hard and hot between them, moving across the still-covered muscles of Bucky's stomach, and Bucky's was hard too, not nearly as comfortably so – his was pressed into the thin covering of sleeping bag on the floor.

“Bucky,” Steve moaned, head still back as his chest lifted again, and his hands found Bucky too – one on Bucky's shoulder, the other on the Back of Bucky's head, cradling his skull.

Steve's fingers tightened whenever he sucked, so he sucked harder, tongue flickering over Steve's nipple inside his mouth, his other hand pinching and rolling, and Steve's hips stuttered upward.

He'd begun to make desperate little sounds with every gasped breath, eyes shut tight as his hips rolled upward again.

“Bucky,” he breathed, “Bucky _please,_ I-”

And then he sounded half like he'd swallowed his tongue as Bucky pressed his own body down to meet Steve's next thrust, painfully aware of how little this was doing for his own arousal.

He pulled back and blew cold air over Steve's nipple instead, watching with amusement the way Steve's body seemed to jump, pinching and twisting Steve's other nipple as he did.

“Bucky, please,” Steve told him, lifting his head to look down at Bucky, his hands urging Bucky up.

Bucky narrowed his eyes, and gave one last, long, open-mouthed kiss to Steve's nipple, and then he surged up and fitted his mouth to Steve's.

Both of Steve's hands curled into fists in the cotton of Bucky's shirt, head tipped back to let Bucky kiss him, mouth open, eyes closed, pushing his body up to meet Bucky's.

“Your shirt,” Steve gasped against his mouth, pulling at the fabric, “Bucky your shirt-”

Bucky pulled away enough to look at Steve's face, stayed still until Steve had tugged the cotton up to his armpits, and then he wrapped his arms around Steve and kissed him again. It was different this time, better like this, skin to skin. Steve's nipples scraped across Bucky's chest, his fingers skittering down Bucky's sides, and Bucky held him and kissed him and kissed him, breath warm between them,

There were things he knew he should say now, things he knew he should be calling Steve.

“Stevie,” he said, the word half-lost in Steve's mouth, and Steve moaned, teeth clashing the next time they kissed.

There were things he shouldn't say, things he should keep to himself, he knew as much, but some of those things-

“God, I want you-”

“Bucky-”

\- Some of them were good, some of them were meant to be said.

“Shorts, your shorts,” Steve gasped at him, and Bucky lifted his weight on his metal hand to drag his shorts down with the other, just as Steve shoved his own shorts down to his knees.

The rush of cool air was strange, a shock, but Steve maneuvered himself so that, when Bucky let his full weight fall against Steve, one of Steve's thighs was between his own.

He didn't have time to think about what they were doing – not even fully undressed, with their clothes shoved only far enough out of the way that they wouldn't stain, Steve grabbed for him, hands sinking into the meat of Bucky's ass to hitch him closer, to fit them together.

This, this was so much better, so much more – Steve had such power behind his body and their skin was dry and warm and electrified wherever they touched. Bucky couldn't remember feeling someone else's skin against his, except that there was something familiar about all of it, something desperately, achingly good that he knew he'd felt before, knew he'd chased and savored whenever he could.

Bucky kissed him again, his hair shrouding them both, Steve's hips beginning to work beneath him and-

Oh that was good, that was so much, close to too much but so good.

Bucky felt his spine bow to keep them together, his cock fitting perfectly in the groove where Steve's thigh met his torso, Steve's cock doing just the same for him. They didn't go slowly – Steve couldn't have and Bucky didn't want to. It felt too good, they'd wanted it for too long, and Bucky had riled Steve up on purpose just to watch him writhe.

“Feels good,” Bucky told him without pulling away, another right thing, because Steve just nodded and opened his mouth wider, pulled Bucky's hips closer.

Each thrust felt to short and too dry, but it would get them both there, Bucky could feel it. This was enough to make him come, and Steve would be on a hair trigger now. There wasn't enough room for them in this sleeping bag, and Bucky kept feeling flashes of the colder air around them as Steve rocked their bodies together.

“Close,” Steve gasped, head tilting back as he gave a particularly slow thrust, “close, Buck, 'm close...”

Bucky scraped his fingernails down Steve's chest, catching his nipple on the way down, and sank his teeth into Steve's earlobe even as Steve's body jolted.

“Miss me, Stevie?” he said, and Steve went absolutely still, body completely rigid.

Bucky thought for one awful moment that these were words that should not have made it through, words that shouldn't have fallen from his mouth, but then he felt warmth and wetness between them, felt Steve's whole body tremble underneath him, and Steve turned his head away to keen without directing all the noise into Bucky's ear.

Steve's grip on Bucky's ass eased up after a few moments, his body going lax, but he didn't let Bucky pull away when Bucky tried. Instead, he kissed him, fitted them more firmly together again, and moved, dragging his own skin against Bucky's cock.

“Stevie,” Bucky said, again, tipping his head back, so Steve kissed his throat, his jaw, his huge hands pulling Bucky's hips forward and down in tandem with his own movements.

It took Bucky a little longer, and there were no magic words to make Bucky come with a moment's notice, but Steve kept murmuring things to him, stupid little things, “I'm here, I've got you, let go, let me see you, so good,” lifting one hand sometimes to stroke his face, move his hair behind his ear, and Bucky wasn't sure he could listen to all of it, wasn't sure he could hear just how good a guy Steve Rogers through he was.

It coiled up in the pit of his belly, slow and thorough like embers in paper, but he felt it coming, felt it begin to roll over him, wave after wave.

“Steve,” he said, a warning, and Steve nodded.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Steve!” Bucky said again, because there wasn't anything better to say, and Steve just kissed at all the skin he could reach, just held Bucky close and gave him friction and pressure. _“Steve!”_

And then Bucky had to press his forehead against Steve's shoulder as his mouth dropped open, silent even in this as he came hard enough to make his breathing falter, hard enough that he couldn't speak, couldn't open his eyes.

Steve soothed him through it with soft words and a hand at the small of his back, and then they were kissing again, more slowly this time.

Steve moaned softly into Bucky's mouth as his chest heaved, and Bucky, too tired to keep himself up any more, let himself be moved by it.

“We need to get cleaned up,” he whispered eventually. “One of us needs to stoke the fire-”

“I'll do it,” Bucky told him. “Wipe off on the bag and then I'll burn it. You get into the spare.”

Steve did, cleaned Bucky up too, and then he helped Bucky get on his own two feet, shaky legs threatening to give way.

“Easy,” Steve told him, supporting him with one hand while he tugged Bucky's shirt down and briefs up with the other.

Only when Bucky was ready to stand by himself did Steve sort out his own clothing, and Bucky bundled up their sleeping bag and took it to the fire as Steve unzipped the other one and started to get in.

***

Cap and Barnes were sitting by the fire and shrouded in sleeping bag when Clint and the rest of their team, two medics included, made it into the base and through to the kitchen the next morning.

Steve looked well, almost content, and the Winter Soldier seemed more at ease than Clint could ever remember.

“You okay?” Clint asked, and Barnes nodded, looked to Cap who was nodding too.

“Sure,” Cap said. “Why wouldn't we be? You want a hot chocolate?”

Clint just shook his head as he smiled. Fine, okay, if they wanted to play at being super cool and unflustered, that was fine, but Clint had seen both their faces last night, and there was nothing better than the difference the morning had made to them.

“Got enough to go around?” he asked, and Bucky shrugged one shoulder.

“That depends. You remember those parkas?”

Clint turned around to go back and fetch them and, if Cap's hand was firmly set over Barnes', he wasn't about to mention it.

~

“Log cabin next time?” Steve asked, drawing the sleeping bag tighter about them as Clint went to fetch them clothes, thumb rubbing over the back of Bucky's hand.

“Barbados or bust,” Bucky answered, and Steve laughed, tugged him close and kissed his hair.

“Anything you want,” he said.


End file.
